Winter
by Hunnybunny12
Summary: Jane Foster flees London. Betrayed by the one's she trusted most and left to the mercy of only bad options, the Jane that Loki knew is dead. Jane doesn't know if she can trust him, and he's not sure he can give her a reason to. Lies will be told. Secrets kept. Truths revealed. Will they survive? *UNDER REVISION*
1. Prologue: Guests

**Author's Note:**

**So sorry for the hiatus, I'm horrible at updating. Anyway, I have been thinking quite a bit about this story, and I really love it and I hope you all do to. I'm currently reconstructing parts of this story because I can't decide what I want! I'm totally open to suggestions, so if there's something you want to see or whatever, just PM and I'd be happy to consider what you have to say.**

**Anyway, I own nothing except for my OC's which I think there will be few of, but just in case.**

**Don't forget to Favorite and PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Review, part of the reason I took such a long hiatus is because I thought this wasn't worth writing anymore because hardly anyone was saying anything about it. So please, be a good reader and review, it really matters.**

**If you haven't been caught up: my story takes place after the events of the Dark World, where Loki did not kidnap Odin, but instead tried to redeem himself.**

**Thank you!**

**Xxoo Hunny**

Niflheim is not a kind realm. There are no rolling hills of green like Vanaheim and certainly not as kingly as Asgard. It is a dead, rocky landscape with volcanic air thick with sulfur and the pungent smell of rot. One could easily find themselves lost in the misted mazes leading to cliffs, with the teeth of unfriendly creatures or jagged rocks waiting bellow. The light is sallow and tart winds roll the desolate landscape, ever scraping away at the obsidian plates of long solidified molten rock. Its misty top layer tall enough to swallow a man; it's a deadly smog, thick and choking. The swelling gales carry the moans and cries of the dead who find themselves here, as well as the rumbling of Nidhug, the Dragon, residing in the underbelly of the realm. You can smell the dead in the stale air; a musky, rotten smell that pinches in Amora's nose and brings her eyes to sting. The air is like a sarcophagus.

This is a realm not meant for the living.

The great hall of the Goddess Hel, Queen of the Dead, is a vast blackened chasm. Clacking steps echo through its pillared emptiness, the sickly light illuminating two visitors.

Amora's hips sway with lush rolls; the beat in her step a rhythmic dance. Her honeyed hair falls in lush curls framed around her sharp-edged face, her abundant lips puckered into a grimace. She approaches the Shadow Throne, a black mist clouding the deity, yet Amora can hear the deep, rasping breaths of Hel.

Amora's companion, a tall cloaked fellow, shifts uneasily at her side, his meaty grasp tightening on his battle axe. In the low light, Amora's ivory skin glows like a candle, a silky and soft aura about her. Her sea-weed green eyes flash to her companion, flicking her head away from the throne. The man hesitates, earning a wicked glare from Amora, so he backs away, his battle axe still tight in his grip. Amora approaches the heaving mist, her steps echoing through the great hall. She steps slowly with measured poise and her chin held high. Amora centers herself before the mist, dipping her head into a bow, the rest of her body following in a smooth crouch, like a panther about to pounce. She plants her splayed fingertips into the dusty floor and opens her sweet mouth to speak.

"_Daughter of Asgard,_" A whispered voice speaks over Amora's gathering speech. Amora closes her lips tightly, pressing them into a thin line. "_I smelt your sweet stench since the moment you entered my realm. Your presence here has made my subjects restless…"_ The misty veil quivers with spite, and tosses itself from the throne like an onyx blanket. Amora watches from the corner of her shifting eyes as the deep smoke pools around her. Her companion shifts with a fortified stance, raising his axe. "_I do not take kindly to intruders, soft one,_" the mystified voice teases, the pooling darkness around Amora glittering as if in laughter.

"Queen Hel, you're greatness precedes you," Amora addresses the smoke, a defiant stain in her creamy voice. The smoke spirals in a wrathful twisting, coiling before Amora's crouched form in a column of ebony waves. The smoke trembles with a rolling growl, quivering with disdain. The mist rolls downward, unveiling a gaunt figure. A glittering midnight cloak veils her thin form, a pale face underneath, lit ablaze with lime green gaze.

"_I find your Asgardian tongue distasteful in my halls, I am half tempted to rip it from your arrogant skull_." the Queen of the Dead's voice is cool, flicking like the tongue of a serpent. "_Rise fool, and be judged_." Amora stands, rolling upward vertebrae by vertebrae, like a rising cobra. She keeps her head bent down, her gaze downcast at the dusty stone floor.

"Your highness, I come to you in great need-"

"_Need?_" Hel's serpent voice laughs and the whole ground shudders beneath Amora. "_What could Asgardian swine possible need from me?"_ The cloak moves with ghost-like speed to Amora's side. Hel's teeth sharpened click inches away from Amora's neck. From the corner of her eye, Amora can catch a glimpse of the Hel's skeletal left half. Amora keeps her head hung low, gaze downward.

"I am no Asgardian."

"_O, traitorous swine,_" Hel muses, her cold breath as foul as the dead.

"It is I who has been betrayed!" Amora protests, her voice faltering with a clenching in her chest.

"_Speak, woman._"

Amora takes a shaking breath, a tear threatening to roll down her perfect face.

"While I stood a loyal watch at the side of Odin Allfather, among the Valkyries, my brother Balder the Fair was brutally slain while a prisoner sprung from his captivity by help of Thor Odinson,"

The smoke quivers with interest, Amora continues with a wrathful bite in her tongue.

"And they did nothing."

"_As is the way of Odin Allfather to sweep misdeeds under his tyrant rug. What is it that you seek?"_

"Vengeance," Amora wields the word as a splitting knife. Hel laughs.

"_I take no part in silly games such as vengeance." _Hel half turns away from Amora. Amora straightens and looks the Queen dead on, frightened to her core by the sight of the diety.

_"_It's more than that your highness," Hel turns back to Amora.

"I wish to wage war on Asgard and cleanse the nine realms of it's existence." Amora quivers, feeling the Queen's glare boring through her face. The Queen moves in wisp-like tendrils, coming to stand before Amora. Full on, Amora can see the whole split of Queen Hel's body: one side living and terrifyingly beautiful, the other side an ivory skeleton. With a twist in her gut, Amora speaks.

"I seek your alliance, Queen Hel," and the queen giggles like a naughty child.

"_My, my. You __**are**__ serious_," Amora raises her chin, looking down her proud nose to Hel. "_You shall have it_." Amora's full crimson lips curl upward into an amused sneer.

"Gracious Queen, you will be most awarded for your aid," Amora promises, crossing a clenched fist over her heart in allegiance. Hel steps back and flicks her skeletal fingers to her left. From the shadows, a deep thundering of footsteps emerges. From behind the throne walks a giant figure, at least the height of two men, with a wide girth around a well-muscled form. The giant moves, and with it, the grasp of an icy chill.

Frost giant. The brute is particularly ugly, a hooked nose with a deep set brow with tribal scars running hither and tither down its sickly blue form.

Amora grins with a small curtsey.

"_This is Hrym, general and chieftain of the Frost Giants. My most trusted ally. You shall have his army_," Hel introduces, guiding the giant before Amora. It falls to a knee, bowing its head before the seductress.

"It would be an honor to spill Asgardian blood at your side," His deep voice booms. Amora smiles with her lovely mouth, a twinkle in her emerald eyes.

"_And you shall have Fenris, most feared beast in all the realms_." Hel motions with her lovely, right-side, and from behind the throne emerges a great bristled, growling, wolf. Its thick greasy fur ripples over powerful muscles. The beast standing far larger than even the Frost Giant. It's beady black eyes furrow upon Amora with a pleased snarl on its lips.

"_Go now and seek your war."_ Hel whispers sweetly, the skeletal side of her form clicking and clacking. Amora bows and steps back with a pivot of her heel. Her back now to the queen, she motions with a flick of her neck to her companion. He glares at the queen silently, who returns him a gruesome smile. He shivers slightly and goes to Amora's side. Before the party can depart, a wisp of smoke appears before Amora, the Queen unveiling herself once more.

"_On one condition, that is,"_ she quips with a clicking smile. Amora stops and raises her chin with a thin-lipped glare. "_You will take a shipment to Asgard."_

"Explain." Amora's voice empty of its previous sweetness. Hel smiles.

"_When the time comes, I shall open the realms and extend my empire with my legions of the dead upon Asgardian soil._" These terms are pleasing to Amora, the more destruction and violence, the better. Amora nods.

"It shall be done."

The Dead Queen steps forward, beholding her skeletal fingers just above Amora's honey-suckle skin, mocking a caress down her cheek.

"_Should you fail, you shall meet a most unsavory penalty_," The queen promises, and Fenris snaps his jaws at Amora's side. Amora deepens her glare into the queen's serpent-eyes.

"I will not fail you my liege."

Amora and Party exit, a cool grin on Amora's face as she wipes a tear from her cheek.

**Please review! :) **


	2. No Escape

**Months Earlier**

Loki knows what he has done. Like a deep cold pit in his stomach, he knows what Thor will think when he realizes Loki is not at the rendezvous on Svartalheim. Thor will think Loki has betrayed him. Again. And for the last time. Thor would never forgive him again. Thor wouldn't have anyone to confide this information to, the realm believed Loki to be dead, killed on Svartalheim by the Dark Elves. No one knew of their plan, not even the mortal, Jane Foster.

Loki moves through the midnight forest of Vanaheim with quiet prowess and a concealment charm camouflaging his body. Loki didn't have time to explain to Thor why he would not be meeting on the dead planet. Why Thor could not know where he was going or that the entire realm was in grave danger.

By now Thor would have begun hunting Loki down.

As Loki runs, the darkness of the forest begins to wane and the brisk chill of morning leaves a fog over the moss covered earth.

His legs ache, and his eyes sting with a longing for the release of sleep. He was only three miles or so from a passage between the realms. It was the remaining secret Loki had kept from Thor so he would not follow Loki when he found him missing. The only way for Asgard, for Thor, to survive would be if Loki vanished completely. He knew what the consequences would be if he failed: exectution or worse. If Amora believes him dead, Loki could defeat her with the only thing he had left against her: surprise. But Amora had to believe him dead, completely. With him dead, Amora would have to look elsewhere for an ally. Loki was her only adversary fit to challenge her, and with him dead, Loki knows she would inevitably become sloppy in her drunken power.

When the dawning light illuminates the forest, Loki crouches inside a rotund hollowed tree trunk. He drapes his cloak across his body and camouflages himself inside the tree. The early morning chatter of birds and hum of insects lulls him to sleep.

_Loki wakes within his dreamscape to find himself reclined against a crimson sofa in his study back on Asgard. Stacks of musty, yellow paged books line spackle the ground and tower over his desk. A fire glows in the large fireplace at his side, crackling and hissing. The air is thick with glittering dust from the books and the scent of their parchment is warm in his nostrils. When Loki sits up, he notices a figure in an armchair across him, with long flowing blond hair and blood red lips. _

_"__Hello darling. I apologize for the intrusion, but this was the only way to contact you," she whispers, leaning forward into the light of the fire place. Loki immediately recognizes her heart-shaped face. She wears a golden helm with gilded feathers on either side and equally golden armor of the Valkyries. Odin's most trusted guard._

_"__Amora," he hisses, a snarl growing on his lips. Amora giggles like a child. _

_"__Like my disguise?" She giggles and shifts her form. Now, she wears a black sparkling dress that clings to the curve of her hips and breasts. "You forget, Loki dearest, just how clever I am. Always a step ahead of you, remember?"_

_"__What are you doing here?" Loki growls, sitting up with his hands gripped in tight fists._

_"__I could ask you the same thing, love. Just where do you think you're going?" Amore asks, a soft smile playing on her mouth. Loki looks into the fire. _

_"__How did you know?" he asks, watching the flames dance. _

_"__If you were __**actually**__ dead, don't you think I would know? Like I said: I'm far more clever than you think," she answers. Her bright green eyes twinkle charmingly in the glow of the fire, her lush hair falling around her shoulders. Loki grinds his teeth, a falling sensation taking over his body._

_"__What do you want from me, Amora?" _

_"__What I've always wanted, dear," she sighs, standing and approaching Loki. As she nears, Loki grows stiff, his body becoming as statue. She kneels at his knees and rests her fingertips on his thigh, tapping them rhythmically. Loki's jaw grows tight and his raven hair falling into his eyes. "Since Frigga's death, Odin has been weakened. Greatly. It could be ours, Loki dear. All you need to do," she says, creeping her fingers up his thigh, "is to join me-" _

_Loki snatches her fingers before they reached anything interesting, his emerald eyes stone cold. _

_"__My answer, as it has been before, is __**no**__, Amora," he says slowly. Amora smiles to herself and rises slowly. _

_She tips his chin up to look at her, her fingers then creeping through his dark hair. _

_"__Loki, I won't play coy. You have something I need. The last gift Frigga gave to you…" Loki swipes her hands away and stands, becoming much taller than her. _

_"__You know I can't control it," he hisses, moving past her and to the mouth of the fire place, his hands gripping the oak mantle. Amora moves behind him, running her fingernails against his back, making him spin around and grip her wrist. She raises an eyebrow, looking to Loki's grip on her thin milky white wrist. She hums pleasantly to herself. _

_"__Reminds you of all those lovely 'meetings' we've had, doesn't it?" she asks. Loki doesn't move, his breath rising in his throat. She holds his stare for a moment, her brows narrowing. "You've seen it, haven't you?" she realizes, leaning close to his ear, her breasts pressing against his chest and making Loki's mouth go dry as a desert. "The future. You've seen it. Tell me what you saw," she whispers against his jaw, her lips pressing against his earlobe. Loki shivers. _

_"__No," he snarls, pulling away from her, his face darkened. Amora scrutinizes him, her eyes fallen to slits. She was thinking, she was scheming. _

_"__Have you forseen your death?" She asks. Loki doesn't answer. Amor smiles. "No, it couldn't be that simple, could it? It's much more complex…." she purrs, running her fingertips along the desk as she approaches him again. "It's the mortal, Foster." Loki stiffens again and Amora knows she's stuck a note. _

_ "__Loki, I am offering you one last chance to join me. Refuse me again?" she chuckles to herself, "I'll have special plans in place for her, that I promise you," Loki closes his eyes, his jaw taut. _

_"__Give me time to decide," he answers quietly, knowing he's beat. _

_"__Fine," Amora's tone has turned pouty, "And when I come to you, and I will, I hope you will have an answer I'll be pleased to hear," she says, touching her palm to his chest. "And if not," she purrs, Loki's fists clench tightly at his sides, "I won't just kill her. I'll slaughter everyone she holds dead, then come for her last. This I promise," Amora growls before turning away from him. Loki watches her leave with a pain in his chest he's never felt before. A burning, aching sensation. _

_"__I'll be waiting, my love." _


	3. Capture

Loki awakens with a jerk, his chest heaving and his heartbeat pounding in his skull like a hammer. He stares blankly into the forest, a deep sinking feeling in his whole body. He rises and continues toward the portal. He didn't realize how many eyes Amora must have on him. Perhaps even the trees and the birds themselves have fallen into her grip.

The sun rises through the sky and dips into the horizon before Loki answers Amora. He closes his eyes, finding the telepathic plane he knew Amora was waiting for him in. A stillness falls in his mind. He can feel her smile in the void.

"My answer is no," he asserts. He runs even fast now, the portal so close he can hear it's heartbeat. It thrums in his chest just as hard and frantic as his own.

Yet what Loki didn't know was that Amora had already alerted Thor to his location. A Loki in chains was a Loki that couldn't run from her, a Loki she could keep close until the time came. It's only moments before the sky darkens with thick, swirling clouds and a thunder rolls so deeply Loki could feel it in his soul.

"Thor!" Loki's voice is broken, his right eye swollen and red like a ripe fruit. It took the full force of Mjolnir to his face to bring him down after Thor's furious pursuit. Now, Thor stands before him. His silver eyes are as dark as the swirling clouds above, and his blood red cape flutters behind him. Loki's mouth opens like he should speak but no sounds escape him as Thor's eyes lay heavy on him with disappointment so profound it could slice Loki in half.

"You know it is a lie, you know me-" Loki can barely choke his words out fast enough before a boot lands itself in Loki's gut. He sprawls to the dirt.

"Do I Loki?" Thor's voice rolls like thunder, a deep growl in his husky voice. Thor circles Loki with his grip tight on Mjolnir.

"Thor." Loki's lip drips with blood and his vision blurs.

"I hear word from the order of Valkyries, _the highest order in Asgard_, that you have been plotting to usurp the throne! Again!" The forest around them is thick and deep. Small plumes of smoke billow up from lightening struck trees, their bark crisped like meat. "Why were you not on Svartalheim?" Thor's voice is eerily calm, a deep groan of thunder growing overhead. He takes a knee before Loki and rests Mjolnir on the earth.

"Thor please listen-"

Thor snags a thick handful of Loki's hair and pulls his head back to face Thor's hardened eyes.

"You," a snarl rises in Thor's throat, "were trying to run," he articulates slowly with icy hatred dripping in his words.

"NO! Thor, listen! the Valkyrie is a spy-"

"ENOUGH!" Thor bellows and stands. Lightening flashes with a resounding clap of thunder following it, so loud it could rip the sky in half. "I am tired of your feeble excuses, Loki," his voice cracks, there's a heart wrenching ache in Loki's chest. "I have a duty to serve Asgard. I have washed my hands of you, Loki."

"Thor wait!" Loki begs, hair raven hair sprinkling his sleek ivory skin. Thor's head droops low like a wounded animal and a yawn of thunder sweeps through the air. "Do not be fooled by the Valkyrie. She is not whom she seems to be!" Loki hisses.

"You tried to betray me once more," Thor's face grows pale, "After I risked everything for you!" Thor stomps back to Loki and grips him by his tunic, forcing Loki to rise on shaking legs. Thor leans close with grit teeth, "Do you know what would have happened to the both of us if it were found out I aided in your escape from Svartalheim?" Thor clamps shackles to Loki's wrists.

"Thor," Loki croaks, "She is in grave danger. Jane." he says. Thor pinches the bridge of his nose, his body rigid. Would Loki really attempt to push Thor back to a place in his life long gone from him in order to gain some leverage on him.

"Why should I believe anything you have to say, Lie-Smith," Thor snaps.

"It is the only option you have left: there are enemies in Asgard." Loki's graveness makes Thor think but only for a moment before his mind reels and remembers that this is not the same changed man he knew in Asgard, this was the same liar that always was, always will be.

"My only option?" Thunder swirls in the dusty clouds above them.

"Please," Loki whispers in a hoarse voice. Thor pick up Mjolnir and wrings the handle. Thor's face is void of any emotion while Loki's eyes shift around him, his wrists turning in their restraints.

"Thor, you need to have Heimdall hide her from the gaze of others. It will delay the Valkyrie at least until you have come to your senses." Loki hisses.

"Why should I believe you?"

"If you have any love left in your heart for Jane…" Loki's words make Thor shiver on the inside. A deep pang of guilt twists in his stomach.

"I'll do it, not for your sake."

Loki releases a deep breath of relief.

"_Thank you,_" he whispers hoarsely.

Thor doesn't know what is ahead for the both of them behind the palace walls, whatever it would be, Thor knows that he would not get Loki out alive. Not this time.


	4. Trial

Loki lifts his gaze from the foot of the throne to the old man's eyes with a devilish sneer on his thin lips. "You have been summoned to trial for your crimes."

At this point, Loki finds his mind swimming with a relentless ebb and flow of raging fury,

"Not only against Asgard, but also against Midgard, which cost thousands of innocent lives. How do you plea, my son."

Noble on-lookers draped in their kingly robes lean to each other and whisper, yet nothing escaped the prince's ears.

"Traitor,"

"Villain,"

"Frost giant,"

Loki cocks his head to the side, his eyes screwed to slits. Like snakes, his chains coil around his body, ever clinking at clattering at his movement. He leans forward with a twitch in his lip.

"I am not," he says slowly, with poisonous annunciation, "and never was your son," A woman, with rolling blonde locks at Odin's side, amongst the Order of Valkyries, smiles wryly.

The old man doesn't seem taken aback by Loki's rebuff, only managing a slight grin on his tired, wrinkled mouth. He wouldn't reach him with humanity, and certainly wouldn't appeal to his previous honorable tittles or loyalties to Asagard. Spite was the only game piece he had left against Loki. Odin had done this twice before, and was pleased with the results. The first was his solitary confinement the first time Loki was returned to Asgard. Odin had known the trickster since infancy, and thus knew that all Loki craved was the attention of others. It only made sense, Odin realized. Loki constantly vied for attention against Thor for Odin's approval, and found little acceptance from his reluctant companions. And when Loki showcased his magic, from which he had learned from Frigga to gain popularity, his companions only grew jealous and turned away. This was his childhood, adolescence, and now his adulthood. So Loki's confinement brought Odin a small sense of satisfaction, knowing that Loki would shrivel like a weed nudged just out of the sun's rays. The second was, consequently, after Friga's death. Odin was no fool. He knew that his wife had more affection for the frost giant than her own son.

Because of her affection, Loki escaped many punishments, and became spoiled. This, of course, according to the bitter old man. Frigga had been Loki's only remaining companion, when all others had left his side, when he had fallen from Odin's graces, and when he was dubbed 'traitor of the realms'. Frigga was the only one with whom Loki would never have to fight for attention. So Odin, with a broken heart, found Spite rolling in his pocket, whispering to him bitterly. This he would use to break Loki. He told the guards, "Tell him the Qu-, no, tell him: his mother has been murdered," Odin had finally snipped Loki's 'silver tongue' with this mockery, this final insult. And oh, how Odin loved to watch it tear at Loki, watch Loki's mind being fall apart as Odin's had. So Odin continues, feeling a vengeful pull in his chest. He feels a sweet voice in the back of his head, speak:

What have you to say in your defense?

And so the Allfather mimics saying:

"What have you to say in your defense?"

Odin's lip twitches with a sneer, leaning forward to hear better what the fool would have to say. Yet, the fallen prince says nothing, except the volumes his hatred written on his face and quivering through every bone in his body. The two hold their vile gazes, neither yielding to the other. A red cloak falls upon the throne, a knelt figure.

"Father, please," Thor's thunderous voice booms and the whole hall gasps at his intrusion into a supreme tribunal. Odin reels away from his son's begging hands, as if repulsed by the utter idea of mercy for Loki.

The sweet voice in Odin's mind beings:

If he has naught to say-

"If he has naught to say then let him suffer at his own hand," Odin spits, not looking at his son, but at the prisoner before him.

The voice speaks: Loki, I sentence you-

"Loki, I sentence you to death," Odin says slowly, watching if he, with his old eyes, could see a twitch on Loki's foul mouth. Loki's eyes go the Valkyrie, his face twisted in confusion. Thor speaks out, his voice pained and rasping.

"Father no!" Thor takes Odin's hands and brings it to his chin as if in prayer, "How many times have I commit crime against the realms? Even my most inexcusable crime resulted in my exile, not death," Thor begs in earnest, his face slick with a sheen of sweat. "Please reconsider," he adds.

Odin keeps his glare to Loki, whose gaze has faltered and finally fallen upon the golden tiled floor. Thor continues with a shaking voice,

"He may not be your son, father, but Loki is my brother," He finishes with a tone of finality. The audience seems to sigh all at once in a heart-stricken pang of guilt. Loki's head shoots to his brother. How could he still find it in his heart to have mercy on Loki, one who had betrayed him numerous times?

Odin, seeing Loki once again gain power over him through Thor's unyielding devotion, rips his hand from Thor.

"Speak not for the criminal!"

"Father, I beg you." Thor's eyes are streaming, yet Odin does not waver, "For Frigga's sake!"

Odin finds his old heart stutter in his chest with a feeling of being ripped like frail parchment.

"Do not kill her son!" Thor adds and the parchment rips again. Odin feels his eyes sting.

"You dare…" his haggard voice rasps, a thick knot growing in his throat. Thor speaks more strongly, seeing his father falter.

"Yes, I dare defend Loki's life, because it is what Mother would have done, because I too still find it in my heart to love him even after his numerous betrayals," Thor speaks with an eloquence that even makes Loki's brow furrow in thought. The audience bites their tongues, seeing their beloved prince defend his 'brother' with such heartfelt vigor. They look, with misting eyes, to Odin.

"Mercy," some say. "Mercy, good king, oh All Father, mercy!"

Odin feels a renewed spark in his heart.

"Father," Thor's voice comes hoarse from his lips.

Odin rips his head to his son, whose speech spoiled what joy he would have gained from Loki's demise.

"I will decide his fate." Odin then looks to the prisoner before him, whose eyes have turned a sallow, sickly green. Loki glares at the Valkyrie. This is exactly what she has planned. "Loki, son of Laufey," he says, as if to remind the audience and Thor of the monster Loki was, yet Thor glares at his father with nebulous blue eyes. "I sentence you to silence. Your lips will be sewn shut, and you will be held bellow until I say further," he looks to Thor once more, whose eyes have misted over, "And if he chooses naught, the sentence is death by beheading. And his traitorous head will be displayed in the Hall of Relics,"

Just another stolen relic…

"Father, no-"

"I accept." Loki voice sounds over Thor's pleas. The hall falls silent as the prisoner speaks, his soft purr of a voice capturing the audience's attention. Thor stands and nods, biting his lips. A crack of thunder sounds overhead, making Loki shudder. The clouds outside the halls stained-glass windows turn a deep steel gray, a gale rolling in the distance. Thor's stormy eyes fall on Loki's.

"Loki, please, let me speak with Father," He speaks but Odin speaks over him, an upbeat in his tired voice.

"What last words shall you utter, Loki Laufison?" He asks, sitting back in his throne and crossing his ankles before him in a relaxed pose. Loki's gaze flicks around the audience, each pair of eyes he meets turning away. This makes him smile, seeing their own shame reflected in their eyes. On lookers could judge as they will, but nothing would sway Loki's confidence. The blonde Valkyrie at Odin's side, a pack of other warrior women behind her, steps forward and adjusts her helmet under her arm with a sweet smile on her red lips. Loki knew it was her voice, that lay hidden under Odin's. This is how she has gained her power. This is how she plans to take down the thrown.

"I want Thor to do it," his cool voice says slowly. The audience gasps.

"Nay! Good prince deny him!" Some cry out, throwing their arms over their faces, women falling to their knees with agony for their beloved prince's task, their jewelry tinkling like crystal stars around their necks and wrists.

Loki realized that mortals were not the only ones that worshipped Thor as a god.

"Loki…" Thor clenches his fists, closing his eyes slowly.

"What brother," Loki's voice spits, "Aren't you strong enough?" Thunder booms above the hall in a great violent growl. Some in the audience squeal with panic. Thor stands paralyzed, his and Loki's gazes frozen in each other's as the guards prepare to aid Thor in carrying out the sentence. Loki is forced to kneel, the chains around him screeching as if in foreboding torture as the guards attach them to links in the hall's stone floor. He wouldn't be able to move an inch. A guard beholds a stone tablet to Thor, upon it a golden needle and a cord of leather. Thor strains his neck to look at it, a grimace on his face.

"You recognize the leather?" Odin asks knowingly. Thor glares at the thread.

"It is from Mjornir's handle." Thor answers, folding the thick leather in his fingers.

"Yes," Odin answers with a sneer, "And you know it's enchantment," Thor turns to Odin with wide eyes. "If he is found worthy of speech, the sentence is fulfilled."

Worthy of speech?, Thor's mind turns with numb feet to the tablet, taking up the 'thread' and needle. The needle looked rounded, not sharpened, at the tip. It was not warm, nor sanitized. It would be a dull threading, and painful beyond what Thor's mind could comprehend. His footsteps echo in a silent hall, the audience hushed, Odin watching with a sickening glee, and Loki awaiting his sentence having spoken his peace. The only other sound is growling thunder, growing more fervid and anguished with each step towards he stops before Loki's knelt form, he can almost see a small shudder wrack the prisoner's body. Though, it was one only Thor would notice. It was the same shudder he saw when Odin spoke down to him when they were children, it was a shamed gesture. He would not reveal this knowledge to Loki. Thor folds the leather strip in his hands, rolling the needle between his fingers with an aching in his gut.

"Brother." he starts but Loki flicks stern eyes to him, as if to try and slice him where he stood.

"Speak not another word," his voice cuts, "Please," Loki adds, his eyes softened. Please, Thor thinks to himself, his last spoken words will be 'Please'.

Loki then closes his mouth, relaxing his lips, preparing himself for his sentence. Thor threads the needle with shaking fingertips and cups Loki's jaw with one hand, the needle in the other. It was the first time he had actually touched his brother in many months. Thor remembers when his touch meant comfort to Loki, when he would hold Loki when he was inconsolable after the teasing and torments, when a slap on the back was all Thor would need to crack a smile on Loki's stony face. Loki flinches at Thor's hand, closing his eyes tightly with a stuttered inhale as if he remembers too. He holds the needle's dull tip at the corner of Loki's lips. He would have to make good work of it, or his Father would surely make him re do it, and that would only cause more pain to Loki. Thor cringes at the thought.

Thor watches, as if a voyeur to the situation as his hands work at their own accord, withdrawing himself. The needle presses against Loki's ivory skin. The needle almost 'pops' slightly as it clears the layer of skin and muscle. It was much thicker than Thor had expected it to be, like sewing layers canvas. Loki's eyes go wide, and his mouth hangs agape, unable to utter a cry, at first. When Thor pulls the needle through his upper lip, he sees Loki's throat quaver, preparing a scream. Loki would want to accept his sentence while keeping what dignity he had left, he would not want to appear weak before the court. Knowing this, Thor slams Loki's jaw shut, effectively silencing his cries into muffled screams. When he begins to thread the needle through the bottom lip, and Thor notices the slick, warm blood coating his fingertips, a few female audience members closest to the scene fall faint while others avert their eyes. The blood dries and makes Thor's pinched fingers around the needle glue together as he threads Loki's lips shut. The needlework is close and neat, so there would be no question as to his workmanship by Odin. Each time the needle passes through the skin with a sickening rip of flesh, Loki's eyes flutter back into his skull with a dull groan and cry. It takes Thor an eternity to reach the center of Loki's mouth. He wants to stop, to give Loki time to adjust and maybe spit out the blood pooling in his mouth from the un-sewn side of his lips but prolonging this would only mean more pain. So he continues, each time the needle passing through skin, another violent roll of thunder, and crack of lighting flashing outside the hall. Loki's tears stream down his face, staining his cheeks and seeping into the fresh wounds around his mouth, the tears singe him like hot coals.

Odin watches as his son makes quick work of the task, each time Loki's mulled cries reaches his ears, a spike of sick joy chills up his spine. When Thor reaches the opposite corner of Loki's mouth, his task nearly complete, Loki has stopped shaking and crying out from between sewn lips, the pain perhaps, hopefully, somewhat bearable now. When Thor finishes, he synchs the knot, Loki only managing a weak groan now. His body slumps against his chains, a thick metallic clanking as he does. The audience, and Thor, are left mute. Thor doesn't move his hands, fearing he'll realize their coated in a thick layer of Loki's blood. The needle 'pings' to the floor in the silent hall. Blood had once been a sign of victory, now Thor can't recall a time where he had felt more ashamed or disgusted by the sight of blood.

Loki doesn't put up his usual fight when the guards rouse him from the ground and drag his limp body away, to solitary confinement in the darkened dungeons. The audience, their show over, exits, leaving only Thor, the King's guard, and the King himself.

"Leave us." Odin waves to his guard. The blonde woman nods to her women warriors behind her and they exit, the rest of the royal guard following. Thor follows them with his stormy eyes, lighting cracking overhead.

"Father, you have become cruel, hard-hearted. I will never forgive you for this cruelty. This is not how you raised me," Thor says with tears running down his cheeks. He turns, his hands the same crimson as his cape, and it sickens him. Thor exits without another word. Thunder rolling violently above the hall.

Odin sits alone in his great hall with nothing but the sweet, cool, voice at the back of his skull to comfort him. The voice speaks again, and Odin All-father listens, and mimics its instruction. He calls for the warrior, leader of the Order of Valkyries. The honey, blonde woman, with sea-weed green eyes approaches the throne and looks at her king with a soft smile.

"Yes my king," her serpent voice rings. The same soft voice speaks in the king's mind: Jane Foster-

"Jane Foster, Ally of Midgard, has made my son weak and unwilling to do his duty to his King." Odin speaks, although they are not his own words.

"What shall you have me do my king?" The woman asks, a light smile touching her sweet mouth. Odin All-father awaits the voice to give him instruction.


	5. Prisoner

It was made certain that Loki would not starve, nor die of thirst during his punishment. Enchantments were cast on him to constantly sustain his hunger and thirst. There were no books, and from his cell, there would be no visitors. His cell was located at the very end of the dungeon, so he could not even look upon other prisoners. He was made lower than them. As far as Odin was concerned Loki could rot in the belly of the realm for eternity.

Weeks past, how many exactly, Loki did not know. Long enough for Loki to forget what sunlight felt on his skin.

By definition, darkness is the utter absence of light. It is said that light is the sole revealer of truth, reality. However, it was in the darkness of his confinement where Loki found truth. Loki was well acquainted with darkness, with shadows that lurked in the far recesses of his mind, with the demons that lie waiting for weakened will.

The darkness, is a cancer, so Loki concluded. Some years ago, it had crawled its way inside him, seeping like tar through the cracks, cold and viscous. In the deepest parts of his soul, it found its home, stretching and sticking to every piece of him it could. It grew, becoming more wrathful and malevolent. It hungered for every bit of light it could swallow, gorging itself on the golden flecks of what was once the prince of Asgard. It grew, flourished with the rage he felt, the betrayal, the sorrow.

It grew intelligent, coiling itself on any weakness it could claw into. It blossomed poison, its sweet bite addictive to Loki and he allowed it into himself. He didn't give up, so much as give in to the demons inside him, taunting his every absent thought. Loki opened the door, and they graciously walked in. So began their reign.

"Oh Loki, darling. I'm sorry but this was unfortunately the only way." Amora, the Valkyrie, stoops beside Loki as he sits propped against his cell wall. In the darkness of his cell he can only make out her bright cat-like eyes, green like the fields of Vanaheim in late summer. "We could have brought the realms to their knees..." she coos, straddling his lap. Loki stares into the entity around him, seeing nothing but feeling her lithe body rest over his. Her spiced scent is cool to his senses and almost soothing. Amora runs her palm over his cheek, yet he remains still as a statue. When once he could have wrapped his fingers around her throat until the life was choked from her, he can't even bring himself to acknowledge her presence. "Ignoring me will change nothing, I will still continue with my plan, and if you refuse to help me," Amora brings her lips to cusp of Loki's jaw, laying a small peck there before whispering, "I'll see that she suffers in ways her mortal mind cannot even conceive."

A small, muffled, chuckle rises from his throat.

"You laugh dear but I am completely serious." He feels Amora's body leave his and footsteps echo at the far side of his cell. "You may think you have hidden her, but sooner or later I will find her. You forget," Amora's voice wavers, "That I always get what I want one way or another."

Loki grinds his teeth as a small light flickers at the edge of his cell, Amora disappearing from him.

He asks the darkness, _Why her? _Why did he have to fall for her? Now, it'd be his affection that would kill her.

The silence crushes him, the abyss giving no answer. It rarely does.


	6. One Year

It had been a year. One year since Jane had fled back to the United States from London. One year since she measured her life in unmarked cardboard boxes and drove North to seek the one thing she needed most after London: sanctuary.

She does not talk about what happened in London, having explained enough to the police and SHEILD what she had suffered. One year since she put Darcy and Erik in the ground.

Jane Foster lives a silent life concealed in a stone, English-style cottage on the northern peninsula of Wisconsin. She remembers visiting the sleepy towns there from when she was a child. After her mom left, her dad no longer had the energy to take her back to a place that had too many memories for the both of them. Jane figured they were the perfect place for her to hide. Only busy nine months out of the year, lots of money to be made by the tourists, then when winter came, they'd crawl back to the cities. A perfect lifestyle for someone not wanting to be found, Jane thought. The tourists don't go outside of the town limits, they stuck close to the local attractions like moths to a flame. With the hype of the summer holiday, no one would be paying attention (among the hundreds of people) to a meek waitress in the local bar. No one would question the quiet girl that lived a quiet life.

The cottage isn't a large homestead by any means, but enough to live on. Two bedroom, one bath, kitchen, dining room, living room. Small. Simple. Perfect.

Jane Foster lives a simple life. It's the daily routine, the bland normality that gives her a sense of control. She needed a bit of control in her life since armored gods among other aliens started showing up on her doorstep. With not a soul to speak to about her experiences, it is easy to avoid answering questions. It was easy to dup into a sense of normality in that quiet northern Wisconsin town. But the ghosts of her vacant thoughts are what keep her up at night: ghosts of intruders, death, and complete and utter hopelessness.

Jane always wakes before dawn, having not really slept through the night previously. The season just slipped into winter. Slowly the life drained out of all the living things, the tourists left with the growing chill, green turns to brown, then became coated in a thick blanket of snow. And just like that it became winter. The faint dawning light touches the diamond-like icicles dangling in the treetops, she chops wood. After that, Jane will make a bowl of cereal that she won't eat much of, maybe a cup of coffee (black, spoonful of honey) she may take a sip or two of. When it's particularly chilly she'll throw a few logs into the fire place and sit on the wood floor. There she'll sit until the flames turn to embers, turn to ash. She became fascinated by fire, how it consumed everything it touched, turning it black, withering it until its nothing more than dust to blow into the wind. Fire knows no control. It will grow until it's devoured everything it can touch, laying waste to everything it comes nearer to. Jane was familiar with the feeling.

It has been more than a year since she had had any contact from Thor.

He hadn't contacted her since the Convergence. She shakes her head of the thought, a twisting pain in her gut. She tries not to think about what happened after London.

It was after the defeat of Malekith, months after in fact, when she had neither heard nor seen any sign of any unearthly visitors. While Darcy and Erik so easily fell back into their daily routines and research, Jane felt like a rock in a stream, unable to move, unable to breath. Thunder roared the night of the third month, but Thor had still not returned. Jane began to have nightmares, her mind deteriorating in a darkness that consumed her. Every night when she shut her eyes, Jane felt as if she moved like a wisp of smoke from her body, across the sky, through the stars. These dreams were not hers and Jane knew it, she knew it like the way you know your house has been broken into even before you notice the front door ajar.

The dreams were of the Aether. Yes. It dreamed. The Aether, ancient and cunning, latched itself to Jane's mind. A being inside her that didn't belong to the conceivability of a mere mortal like herself, it would only be a matter of time before it'd tear her apart. She could feel it scratching at the walls of her mind, ever going closer to freeing itself and releasing whatever hellish apocalypse dreams it had conjured.

She'd close her eyes and feel the prickle of it crawling through her veins like a pestilence, gnawing at her from the inside, like she had swallowed a ball of flame that cooked her from the inside out until she was a charred, unrecognizable corpse. Every night she'd burn with the heat of a sun not of her realm, hurtling through the sky, destroying, crisping, smiting everything thing she touched. Jane did not allow herself to believe that there was any possible way that the Aether could have held on after Svartalfheim. Malekith had drained her of it, pulled every drop from her essence until she were nothing more than an empty sack of flesh. Yet, every night it was the same, her spirit moving across dimensions, across time, reliving every painful memory, every second of it. Always the journey would end with Jane standing in the decrepit remains of Svartalfheim, a red light descending upon her. What Jane didn't realize was that the Aether sensed the danger to its host, the Aether tried to warn her.

The night of the fourth month night visitors came from another realm that were not Thor. And Thor never came for his precious Jane Foster, and that, Jane would never forget.

After she left the hospital, it was a quick funeral for her companions. She found she couldn't speak about Darcy or Erik anymore. Jane had spoken to the SHIELD enough about what happened. She found her lips couldn't even form the syllables to their names anymore, not since the funerals.

The nightmares worsened. The Aether filled in the cracks of the shattered pieces the experience left her with.

The red hair dye was cheap, the hair cut even cheaper considering she did it in her bathroom mirror with a pair of crafting scissors. Then she booked a ticket to New York.

Jane can't recall why she bothered packing her research. The stars no longer interested her. In a few cardboard boxes, Jane packed the ingredients to a new life. She landed in New York, a very different New York than she had remembered. She wasn't surprised to find that Tony Stark had pretty much paid for half (if not all) of the city's renovations of destroyed buildings, while simultaneously converting them to clean power. Jane knew that being connected to such a person as he, she would most certainly come under the public eye.

Jane Foster needed to hide, escape questions that were bound to be asked, ones she'd rather not answer. She was sick of questions, sick of explaining. Sick of trying to reason why her hero had not come for her in her most dire time of need.

Jane Foster needed to disappear. First she went to a bank and emptied her account. Five-hundred thousand in cash was deposited by SHIELD for her troubles. It wasn't nearly enough to cover at the very least the emotional damage caused to Jane. 'Compensations' they called it, like the money could patch up the pain that had already been done.

SHEILD's money, coupled with her life savings was more than enough to start fresh. Jane spent the first day very, very, very, paranoid with all that money in two large brief cases. After the bank she hit a lawyer's office. Turns out changing your name is a lot easier than you'd think. All she had to do is show her passport, provide the new name, sign the paper, boom. Voila. Jane Foster became Johana (Jo) Smith. She knew it wasn't original in the least, but it'd be enough.

With that done, she filled her suitcase with a new wardrobe, plain clothes fit for cold weather. She knew exactly where she was going, and four to five months out of the year that place was an icy wasteland. The next day she caught a cab to a dealership in the far west suburbs, a shady place but the shadier the better. She couldn't risk people tracking her with credit card receipts or dealership cameras, especially SHIELD. From now on, everything cash, no electronic trails of any kind. The truck was used but sturdy; an old grey Ford pickup, 1978.

Next came the drive. She hadn't been to this place since she was a kid with her parents. The truck obviously didn't have GPS and she was far too paranoid to ask for directions. A lot of time was spent sleeping on the shoulder of the highway, or figuring out she had missed her exit and had to back track miles to get back on the right path. Jane had also never drank so much coffee in her life, not since she had to write her thesis on astronomical theories back in grad-school. She found a new love for beef jerkey and red bull, which was probably going to make her need dental work when she got to her destination.

It was about a four day drive, up to the Wisconsin peninsula. During a stop she had got a hold of a realtor on a pay phone (she had thrown away her cellphone at a garbage in Heathrow airport) and found that the house was fairly cheap, hadn't been fixed since the 70's but it was useable. When Jane drove up the relator was waiting, one look through the small house and Jane signed the papers that day. She paid in cash, of course, which earned a strange look from the relator but nothing more than that. Jane crafted the excuse that she was simply paranoid of banks and serially avoided them. Jane had a newfound appreciation for people who didn't ask questions. Most of the furniture was bought with the house, other was rummaged from various garage sales from the good-folk of Sister Bay, Wisconsin. The house itself was miles outside of town, set on three acres of forest property all for Jane. The nearest neighbor was probably a ten minute drive. Jane liked that, liked the idea of isolation, solitude. She hadn't had much of that since London. It was the first Christmas she spent alone, and Jane Foster couldn't have been more content.

Nobody wondered about the misty-eyed red haired woman living by herself in the woods. Summer was fast and full of strangers, no one to recognize Jane, although she wasn't named 'Jane Foster' anymore. It took some time getting used to her new name and identity. To anyone that would ask: she grew up in Chicago, quit college to become a writer and came up to Wisconsin for the peace and quiet to write. It was an easy story for people to understand, and it was left at that. Autumn was short but full of gorgeous colors that coaxed Jane into the wilderness every day. Winter became quiet, and the midnight sky became the enemy. All Jane could see was the vast blanket of stars above her, stitched into an obsidian sky, the moon a pearl in the black sea. Jane could swear, she could hear the wind whistling through the trees, whispering her name like a prayer. She swears when she looked into the stars, that she felt them staring back. Right into the core of her soul. The Aether shifted inside her, she could feel it like a cold snake wraped around her guts. It didn't like her looking at the stars. So she didn't.

It been a year since all of that excitement.

Now, Jane follows the same routine everyday with contented ease. She fills the time with sketching. It became the only way for her to 'talk' about her past. Sometimes she sketches the face of a golden god, other times it's a red sky filled with dread. Sometimes it's the trees, other times it's a curved sword dipped with her own blood. Sometimes it's an animal, other times its two bodies.

Jane fills the time with walks through her property. Trips into town for supplies. Sometimes to the frozen pier where she can imagine herself plunging into the icy depths and disappearing forever.

Everything has order, a place to be put, a use. Nothing is extraneous, and what is found to be is burned. Like her old passport, old driver's liscense, old birth certificate, old pictures, old life. That first New Year's day was a bonfire of what used to be Jane Foster.


	7. Arrival

**Loki**

Upon arrival, Loki finds himself steeped in a darkness so profound it consumes his entire essence. She had not been in London where he had felt most of her energy. It frightened him, but didn't stop him in the least. Loki searched so long through the mists and void, he found himself entrapped in it.

He's not sure how long it's been. Time seems to be nonexistent here, at least for a little while. Could be milliseconds, hours, days, weeks. A year perhaps.

Loki is aware that he cannot feel his body. He knows in the recesses of his mind that he has a body but for the moment he simply exists. He is nothing more than a spirit on a forget plane.

No taste in his mouth (that is if he could feel his mouth), not even a sound to fill his ears: just emptiness. He cannot feel his corporeal body, yet, afloat in this plane he feels a cool scent wash over him, shocking his consciousness. It's not a sweet scent that overwhelms him, although, not an entirely bitter scent either. A deep earthy musk of moss and juniper spice fills Loki to the brim, until he can't possible soak up any more. It's a familiar scent, though, he cannot recall where he had encountered it. Was it the scent of her hair? He grasps at the memory rushing up to him like an angry tide with no avail, as if he's reaching through smoke. Loki is familiar with this feeling, this restlessness, this sorrow.

The second immediate sensation that bubbles to the surface is ache. It's an ache that isn't entirely physical, yet it bears a nearly painful weight where his chest should be. There's the ache where his legs should be; tendons and sinews bent to their maximum, stretched and snapped. An ache in his bones; pure exhaustion overwhelming him. It's a tidal force, wracking every nerve ending, pulsing in his heartbeat, his blood, his brain. Their combined weights do not sit on top of his body, as if to crush him, rather, they weigh beneath him pulling him deeper and deeper into the void. He knows what lies there in the darkness for him: shadows and demons he'd rather not explore.

No certitude, no peace, nor help for pain.

Loki had read that in Midgardian poem, and it's meaning could never be more real for him than it is now. He had known physical pain and was, unfortunately, quite familiar with it. From this, he knew that there were different kinds of pain. The pain of a lashing was different from a bone breaking. A sting differed greatly from a bite, a snap from a twist, a cut to an impalement. This pain is something entirely different, a pain that has no remedy. A bone will heal, flesh will heal, yet he knows that this wound somewhere inside him will fester, and gnaw away at him. He's now sure how but he's faintly aware that its very cold, but the cold is something his body has always been familiar with.

So this is Hell, he muses, his inward voice garbled as if underwater.

He lies in this timeless realm of nauseating weight, and bombardment of ache for what seems like eons. Loki imagines where his corporeal body may be, wherever he landed, growing old and weathered alone in a cold, dank place. In a tomb, perhaps.

Am I even alive? He wonders vaguely. As if it mattered at all. Perhaps the mists consumed his very essence and he passed on into the the underworld.

And for the second time the God of Lies feels very alone, and quite afraid. The first was in his incarceration, with the cold promise from Amora's lips to kill perhaps the only other being in the realms he cared more than himself for.

It doesn't come back all at once for him. Disjointed from time, it feels like an eternity, lifetimes just to feel the faintest sensation of self once more. He can feel his aura wrapped around a definite form, his form. He feels his weight and gravity again, anchoring him to somewhere. One by one, they begin to come back to him; the blood rushing through his body, the power of his heart, breath filling his lungs, head pounding, and the cold temperature of his body.

His consciousness, tossed in the chaotic void, slowly creeps back to shore with each rushing wave. What first washes to shore is a buzzing, a fritzing in his ears. It's a buzzing out thought, rapid synapses, controlling his breath, a small twitch his leg and in his fingers. He knows he is alive, and that doesn't affect him as much as it should. Other small things begin to wash back.

He remembers his name, Loki Laufeyson, as if it were the chill of a Jotun blizzard inside his throat. There used to be warmth to his name, especially when spoken from his mother. Her face, golden in aura, materializes. Her laugh, her smile.

He feels her wound as if it were his own, a knife wrenching itself through her skin, through cartilage and bone, collapsing her lung, and piercing her heart. He feels himself drowning in her blood. He is fully aware of blood on his hands, in his eyes, running down his throat in a never, ending stream of regret, regret, regret. He led the monster right to her. He might has well have held the knife himself.

Beyond this, multitudes of memories like small stones on a beach, pile before him. Thousands and thousands. The more painful the memory, the heavier the stone. This, it seems, is his punishment for spending too much time in the limbo between planes. He must relive the torture of every mistake he has ever made. If he were to forget a single piece of himself, he would lose it forever. What if Jane was washed somewhere within these stones? The sound of her laugh, the breath in her smile, the flick of those brown eyes that had disarmed him so completely. He couldn't risk it.

Each piece of himself he hauls away from the tumultuous waves weighs incredibly, as if it were trying to swallow him back up. It takes years, or so it feels. Decades of piecing himself together, of gut wrenching sobs and roars of hatred bubbling from his ragged throat.

As he heaves the last stone onto the beach, finally, there's the feeling of light on his eyelids. He doesn't believe it at first, so he focuses on the dull light penetrating his skin. It's definitely there, a very cold color. A dirtied ivory speckled with aquamarine, made from the light on a cloudy day.

Finally, there is relief, finally there is certainty that he is somewhere, and he is waking up. The buzzing in his ear fades into a hollow groan. Wind blowing through trees? The musk of earth and juniper is still thick in his nose. A forest? Triumphantly, he feels the waves, the tides of pain and ache receding back into the recess of his mind. He senses the iciness around him. Snow. He fights the waves back, pushing them harder and harder away from him, back to their pit to where they begrudgingly flee.

His eyes open, only to shut immediately. The white light is blinding, nearly painful to his eyes. With a stuttered breath he peaks through his eyelashes, only to see blurs of white, and a dead-brown color. Blinking rapidly, he opens his eyes. The white softens, the dark colors sharpen.

Snow. Snow and trees. Dead trees, His mind chugs. Dark green plumes of juniper branches lie speckled around him as well. He remembers now, it was the scent of her hair. How long had he been just lying in the snow, dormant like an animal in hibernation? His body continues to burn with a deep ache, yet this one blessedly physical. Lying on his side, the cold ground beneath his temple numbs his skull. He extends his limbs, stretching the pain from his body. The wind howls through the trees, being a Jotun, he cannot bring himself to shiver in the cold.

He rolls onto his back, groaning as he does. Groaning, shaking, and laboring on his breath.

Before he can move anymore, a twig snaps through the chilled silence of the forest, followed by an odd heartbroken gasp. Through blurred vision, he finally sees what he spent all this time looking for. Alive. And all he can manage is a blue-lipped sneer on his quivering lips. Yet before his vision fades completely, he knows something off about her. This is not the same Jane Foster that crouched over him in Svartalheim as he faked his death. A thousand question bubble up in his mind, but his world becomes cast in darkness once more.

**Jane, November 2, 4:37 am.**

_Jane Foster is burning, every inch of her essence turning to ash, crumbling away like dust. Her scream expire before they even reach her lips, her throat turning to char. The air is painted a sickly yellow, dust so think in the air it looks like fog. Through burning eyes, Jane looks to her blackened feet to the obsidian earth beneath her. Svartalfheim. Jane had gotten used to the touch of fire, the sensation of crumbling away. Jane knows that it's coming for her, the red light. She runs and finds herself in a darkened kitchen. She knows this scene. Jane lies on the tile floor beside two other bodies, the cruel laughter of a beautiful woman above her. She crawls away, footsteps follow her. There is a red door. Jane crawls up to reach the handle, one hand holding in her guts from a wound in her abdomen._

'_I killed them' she cries. 'I'll kill you!' she screams at the disembodied laugh of the woman. The instant Jane's fingers grasp the gold handle the door dissipates and Jane finds herself in a small dark closet. Jane feels small, like a child. She hears yelling. Mom and Dad fighting, again._

_'They never stop fighting' Jane sobs, curling into a ball and willing herself into nothingness. Then she feels it like a cannon blast to her chest. She's standing in Svartalheim again. The red descends above her, and she runs as fast her her charred limbs can carry her through the thickened fog._

_Jane hears one voice calling her name over and over._

_'Jane Foster,' it whispers seductively, in a silvery voice she promised she's never forget._

She wakes with a start, chilled to the center and her body paralyzed as if in rigor mortis. Her breath is shallow and heart thumps wildly in her chest. Something is very different, and perhaps, very very wrong. She hadn't felt that way since London, since…Darcy and Erik.

Danger, Danger, Danger, her instincts chant.

Jane swipes the panic from her mind, telling herself again, as she had many times before, that is was just a dream. Just a dream. There was no feasible way anyone or anything could find her now.

"I'm safe," she murmurs to herself. Yet, she feels the fear coil in her belly like a viper, waiting to strike.

Jane rolls her shoulders with a deep sigh, wondering briefly what day it is, almost certain it could be a Sunday. Jane doesn't bother much with dates anymore. The only thing that matters is the rising and setting of the sun and the change of the seasons.

Jane's body is layered thickly in blankets, her furnace not working yet again. She curls her toes, realizing she's shivering. Through crusted eyes and matted hair, Jane rolls and looks out the window to her left. She doesn't bother much with clocks either, the only important times being dawn and dusk. Now, the sun hasn't even begin its journey across the sky, barely touching the horizon. Clouds smear across the sky, combined with the dawning sun, turn the light various shades of pink and mauve. It looks like God dipped his hand in paint and dragged his fingertips lazily over the sky. Jane smiles to herself, she hadn't thought of God in a long time. Being a scientist, she wasn't exactly a very religious woman. Jane relied on the hard facts, proof, which religion just didn't make the cut. That feeling was amplified by a thousand when Thor first found her in New Mexico, and even more during New York's crisis and London's. Especially after London. Nothing was certain anymore. Not to say that things were 100% before, yet the chances of other life being out there being close to zero made life easier. Most ideas were left to the imagination, most complexities only theoretical. Now, the universe turned itself upside down and poured its contents over Jane's head. That's half the reason why she can't bring herself to look at the stars anymore. The other half…

The Aether writhes in her again.

Jane sips her coffee, rolling the bitter taste over her tongue as she watches an early morning fire burning. The embers click and hiss to each other in a strange language, churning smoke from her chimney. She idly notices that she will need more firewood soon, but remains motionless as the sun rises. Jane sits at the center of her living room on the cinnamon colored wood flooring before the fireplace. The house warms around her nearly instantly with the rising sun, pouring its light through her window curtains. At the center of the room, her body acts as a sundial. Jane notices her shadow growing with each couple of minutes, the embers whispering their strange language to each other. Jane's insides crawl because it's a language she vaguely understands. Popping and hissing and clicking and groaning, crumbling. Crumbling.

The fire dies and Jane retreats upstairs. She fills her clawfoot bathtub nearly to the brim and gingerly eases herself into the prickling water, effectively chasing the chill from her insides. It's a constant battle of chill and warmth, fire and ice in her soul. She feels something different about today. It's a burning at the back of her neck, a sting in her chest, a panic pacing across her mind. Jane thinks through her strange superstition. It had been a year, a year of complete and blessed silence, and nothing. She'd wiped 'Jane Foster' off the map, and grown into her new identity. Not one person she made eye contact with had ever given her this panic feeling she feels now. She knows there's little chance SHIELD or anyone for that matter knew where she was, if they had they would have found her by now. Jane shakes the thoughts from her paranoid brain as she piles on the layers. It had snowed during the night, and she'd have to shovel out her truck to get more food later. She pulls on her favorite forest green jacket, with real fur around the hood, keeping her warm while she picks through the wood pile. The cold burns the tips of her ears, her chest seizing slightly at the frigid air entering her lungs. But the cold is something Jane's gotten used to.

Jane had become a lot stronger since London, really, she's the strongest she's been in her life. The first time Jane had tried to chop wood, she got herself six splinters, blisters, sore back, and only emerged with three small logs for tinder. Since then, Jane's picked up a few tricks. She sheds her coat when she beings to sweat (cold sweat could get you pneumonia, and that means a doctor, and that means the possibility of SHIELD finding her so it's a big no no) and picks up the axe with ease, swinging it over her shoulder and cracking through the logs as if she were slicing butter. She's noticed herself that her shoulders had broadened and the muscles across her chest and become taut. Besides the red hair, she thought she looked like beefed up Sarah Connor from Terminator.

t doesn't take her very long to get a decent pile to get her through the next couple of days. Pulling on her coat she loads the logs into a cart by her chopping block and hauls the load in through the back door. The minute she closes the door, Jane feels the back of her neck burning again, a striking panic lancing up her spine. Her ears ring with a familiar sense of something watching her, something she hadn't felt in a long time. It was definitely not a welcomed feeling.

Jane stomps her feet off at the back door, her eyes scoping the forest through her window. It's the feeling she gets of being watched, sighted, known. Jane shoves the anxiety back into the depths of her mind, resolving not to think about it until she went into town later. If she saw people looking at her strange, then that would be confirmation enough that someone had been asking about her. A year ago there had been a good amount of news coverage done on her, her having a hand in saving the world and all, if anyone was going to notice her it would have been a year ago, not now.

Jane inspects her house for a few moments, her eyes touching every surface, looking for something, anything out of place in the slightest of ways. Everything was stilled exactly where she had put it. Her copy of 'Walden' still cracked open to page 48, exactly where she had left it on the sofa. Picture frames still staged on top of the fire place, not an inch out of place. But something is different. Perhaps something not entirely physical.

Looking at it from a visual standpoint, imagine a fishbowl. Jane's home is a fishbowl, Jane a dainty little goldfish. Perhaps there are a few plants, a little fake castle for little fish-Jane to live in, all is well in the fishbowl for a year. Then someone takes a rock and drops it into the bowl. The water volume changes, there are ripples in the water, shaking every little bit of fishy-Jane.

There is a boulder in her fishbowl. Jane is certain she hears a ringing in her ears. She zips up her coat and turns to the back door. The ringing grows louder as she touches the handle. Perhaps the ringing was coming from outside. Maybe that's exactly what it wants, Jane out in the open. Whatever 'it' may be. Jane bites her lip, a grimace on her face. If someone had found her, Jane had had enough of the fucking suspense bullshit. Her life isn't a Hitchcock movie. Jane know's she's stronger now, strong enough to fight this time. This time she wouldn't be the one left bleeding out. And if not: at least she'd go out surprising or at least impressing he motherfucker that killed her.

With a loud huff from her lips, Jane swings the door open and slams it shut behind her, pulling up her hood and trudging through the snow. She makes sure to pick up her ax at the backdoor. The ringing seems to grow louder as her feet 'crunch, crunch, crunch' closer to the wood line of her property. The sky has already begun to darken, night falling quickly around her in a burnt-orange and lavender display.

She wrings the handle of the ax. The ringing is almost blaring as she stands before the forest, her glare hardened, her chest burning, eyes glistening and a thick coil in her throat. Jane feels a certain kind off fire smoldering inside her, defiant and roaring. The Aether wraps tightly around her, like a clenched fist ready to fight.

She throws her arms open to the forest, the ringing screaming in her face so loudly and close she could see its spit flying.

"S'That all you got?!" she roars into the trees, the ringing now a pulsing vibration in her brain, "C'MON!" she screams, a puff of fog coming from her lips. With a few heaving breaths, Jane realizes the ringing has stopped, and is now fairly certain she's lost her mind and has resorted to screaming at trees.

What would Erik think? She muses with a small smile. Erik, she thinks, and her smile falls. What's next? Eating the face off of some poor animal? Jane drops her arms at her sides, the ax seemingly heavier in her grip. She listens to the tree's snicker to each other, their branches groaning and clacking together loudly. Jane looks up to the clouded sky, hearing a small crack, like the sound the sky makes before lightning.

The sound strikes something deep inside Jane's muscle memory. She had heard that noise before, and it wasn't a coincidence that thunder began to roll immediately after. Jane's heart skips a few beats, the clouds turning dark and swirling. Before Jane can cry or laugh or scream, a beam of pulsing, electrifying light shocks its way into the heart of the forest. The earth shakes beneath Jane's rubber boots and the trees screech and groan at its intrusion. The light, as soon as it touches down like a tornado of brilliant auras vanishes back into the sky.

Jane realizes she's not breathing; her heart beat in her ears, her mind scattered like broken glass. Her feet begin moving before her brain can even process what's just happened.

Could it be? No, couldn't possibly be. Maybe?

Jane drops the ax and finds herself running through the dead trees without abandon, skipping over snow drifts, bolting over frozen streams, nearly stumbling, sometimes falling into the snow, cutting her hands on frozen branches, cheeks burning from the biting wind but Jane doesn't care because all Jane can think about is…

Jane sees a small clearing the Bifrost had made during touchdown. Her heart's in her throat, beating as if it were about to explode, or maybe she'd cough it up if she ran any faster, or maybe it'd just give out there. She comes to the wood line of the clearing, eyes scanning wildly for that familiar crimson. When she finds none, Jane feels the cold catch up with her and she shivers. Jane furrows her brow, her jaw taut as she steps as silent as a mountain lion through the clearing.

Jane recognizes the burn marks of the Bifrost etched into the ground, gobs of half-way melted snow oozing into them. Her ears perk when she hears a fairly audible groan, a very human-sounding groan, so Jane can count out non-human aliens coming to kill her. She hears it again, just behind a rolled over tree trunk. Could it be hurt? What if Thor is hurt. Jane feels her instincts kick in as she quickly jumps to action, nearly leaping over the fallen tree and coming upon the landing site. That's just when she stops dead in her tracks, a twig snapping under her boot.

Its bent over, crunched into a ball on the ground and whimpering, its shoulder shaking like a wounded animal coated in silky black and green and gold. Green and gold woven tunic.

Jane's hand flies to her mouth, a noise escaping her that she wouldn't expect when she's see the God of Mischief. The Lie-Smith. His skin is tainted blue, which could be attributed to his Jotun blood, or quite possibly to his blood that was freezing up in his veins and killing him slowly. He turns, his movement slurred and sloppy, drunk on fatigue. As soon as his emerald eyes meet hers, his thin lips curl into an oddly satisfied grin, as if he wanted to laugh. Before Jane can even react, Loki's eyes roll back into his skull and he exhales a type of tired huff, falling back into the slushy snow with a 'thud'.

Jane Foster is a woman of science. Jane Foster can't bring herself to move. Loki died. He died in Svartalfheim. She'd taken his pulse. That creature drove it's blade through his chest. Jane saw it impale just under his sternum, poking out through his back. It would have collapsed his lungs, pierced his heart, having him die in moments fro any normal human. Still, he was a god, she realizes, but still. He should be dead. Should be. She saw Loki die in Thor's arms. In Thor's arms, she thinks and immediately aches.

Yet, here Loki was, holding on to life by a thread. She knows Loki is dying. Dying for real this time.

**I know, here we are again folks. But this time around I'm going to be changing some things up because I wasn't very pleased with how things were going last time. Anyway, please don't hate me! **


	8. The Visitor

**Jane, November 2, 5:00 am**

_"I didn't do it for him," Loki's barely whispering now, his body convulsing as he struggles to take in breath. He howls an agonized sputter through grit teeth, clawing Thor's chest and screwing his eyes shut. Jane can only watch as Thor holds his brother, tears pooling in his eyes. Jane has no place in this moment, no place to soothe Loki's passing. She feels almost ashamed watching, like a sick voyeur sticking her nose in places she shouldn't. Jane takes in a stuttered breath, standing far from the scene. She wonders if death among Aesir is more tragic, knowing their lives are supposed to last thousands of years. Jane wonder's briefly how Thor would feel in her time of dying, acknowledging the fact that her life was one breathe for him, a heartbeat. _

_Loki seems to sigh, a short cut off breath from his pale lips before his body stops shaking. His chest stops moving, stops breathing. Jane blinks. Loki is dead. Loki's skin darkens, blackened veins stretching across his face like dark spider webs' tendrils, his eyes vacant and cloudy. Loki is dead. Dead. _

_Thor is shaking, begging, his breath seizing in his throat. _

_"Brother," he chokes, cradling Loki's head as if he were a child. _

_This is a moment that could have brought down religions, caused an apocalyptic uproar to the Vikings that once worshipped Thor and Loki as gods. What would they think of their gods crying, and their gods dying._

_Jane isn't sure how long she stands there, barely breathing herself as Thor roars and sobs for Loki. The sounds he makes are unnatural for a person to make, anguished and garbled with animalistic fury. Jane feels tears pinching her eyes, not for Loki, but for Thor. He'd fought so hard for Loki's soul, and now it was lost forever. _

_"Thor," She murmurs, kneeling at his side with her arms around his shoulders. "I'm so sorry,"_

_"My brother," he hiccups on his breath, embracing the corpse and burying his face in the crook of Loki's neck. Jane looks to the swirling sky, a small yet foreboding 'crack' in the distance of the Bifrost. She snaps her head back to Thor, squeezing her arms around him. _

_"Thor," she says as softly as she can, though her own throat catches on her breath, "We need to go, now," she urges. _

_"I can't leave him here." _

_"We have to go," Jane says again, nudging his shoulders. _

_"I can't…My little brother. Can't leave him alone. He will be afraid," Thor barely chokes the words out. The sickly colored sky 'cracks' loudly with a rolling grow of thunder, lightning flashing across the sky. Jane feels hot tears pinching her cheeks. It was as if the sky was a giant eggshell, splitting open above them in a violent display, pouring its dusty, swirling contents over them._

_"Please, Thor," Jane begs earnestly, the shout of Aesir soldiers in the distance, echoing across the valley of dead earth. _

_"I can't…" he sobs, shaking inconsolably._

Jane's heart thuds like a jackrabbit in her chest. Jane can't bring herself to move, her body trembling, hands quivering, her mind reeling. Loki was dead. Jane watched the blood bubble from his lips, his chest seizes in desperate gasps for air while Thor could only attempt to ease his passing. His chest barely moves now but Jane can still hear his ragged, shallow breaths.

Jane does the only she knows how; she turns and runs.

Broken sobs burst from her lips in violent eruptions. A hot wetness coats her face, then instantly crystalizes to her skin as she bounds through the snow drifts with leaden feet. Jane's chest aches, a clawed grasp of anger and grief squeezing her heart. Jane Foster is terrified. She's terrified because this isn't the first enemy to find her since London.

He's come to finish me off, Jane's frenzied mind tries to recall what escape plan she had in order, only to realize she had none. She'd have to pack now, leave in her truck, start up life somewhere else. But who's to say someone else wouldn't come for her? How long until he found her again?

Jane remembers that Loki did saved her life on Svartalfheim, but doesn't let it cloud her judgment. He had saved one life out of the thousands he'd killed, she wasn't ready to trust him so easily, not by a long-shot. Thor wasn't around this time to keep his brother in check, hell, a year ago had Thor turned a blind eye Loki'd probably have slit her throat just for the sick pleasure of it! Thor hadn't come when she needed most, she's certain he won't come now.

It seems like miles to Jane until she reaches the garage, clearing through the drifts like a snow leopard, her eyes flat-line of any emotion other than fear. Her body seems to convulse, either from the cold, or from the panic tearing at her insides, she's not sure. Why would Loki be sent here, to her? Who had sent him? But Jane knows the answer to that question.

Thor. He's the only one. Unless Loki had acted alone, but in that case: why Jane?

_Why? What would Thor not come himself?_

Jane feels her lip quivering, _Why?_

Jane stops at the doors to her garage, her fingers curling into tight fists at her side. She had to have an answer, Why? And the man in the forest, dying, is the only one who could have the slightest idea. Jane shoves herself against the iced-shut door, once, twice, three times until it swings open with an icy 'crack'. It doesn't take long to power up the ATV.

The roar of the engine shatters the deathly silence of the forest, the sky above a threatening navy blue and the stars like eyes in the darkness. Jane couldn't hope to drag the man from the clearing to her cottage, it was a little less than a mile and by then he would succumb to whatever it is that's killing him. Her eyes sting with the blast of snowflakes and frigid air as she speeds through the forest. Jane Foster's mind explodes under the weight of her panic, her incredulity. She feels tears threatening to pool down her cheeks, her eyes stinging and her throat clenched.

Jane's ATV thunders through the clearing, nearest to Loki's body as the fallen trees would allow.

Jane runs to Loki's catatonic body, forcing her mind to forget what and who exactly this man is. She kneels and touches her ear to his chest, feeling a soft tap of his heart, a lazy rhythm. Jane leans close to his mouth, noticing dried pocks marks or blood lining his lips. Jane listens, only hearing the lightest breaths escaping him. She would have to move quickly or he'd die here in the forest, from what exactly Jane struggles to solve. It couldn't be hypothermia, not when his lineage had been born in ice.

Jane moves to crouch at his head, hooking her arms under his armpits. With clenched teeth, aching chest, and burning legs, Jane hauls Loki's body backward toward the ATV. She forces her mind to forget that she is saving the life of a man that made Erik Selvig go insane. She forces herself to forget that he killed hordes of innocent people in New York. She forces her arms to carry the helpless devil to safety. Because…

Though they weren't blood, Jane had witnessed firsthand the devotion Thor had to Loki. This is Thor's brother. Though Jane loathed the thought, she was saving Loki, if not for herself, then for Thor.

With a grimace, Jane drags his limp body over a fallen tree trunk, ignoring the biting strain in her back and arms. Without the least bit of concern, Jane heaves Loki to the ATV, his torso hanging loosely over the seat. Jane wastes no more time. She throws the ATV into gear and with one hand tangled in Loki's tunic to hold him steady and one hand to steer she blazes through the forest.

Though Jane Foster is a woman of small stature, she manages to 'carry' the six foot five god. It takes more effort than she'd like to awkwardly drag him through the back door and into the living room. With a final callous shove, Jane grunts and finally heaves him to the couch. She figures a cracked rib or two couldn't do more damage that's already been done.

He was after all, a Jotun, Jane isn't sure whether putting him close to the fire was a good idea. Did he need heat? Cold?

Jane throws a few logs into the fireplace and stokes the flames. She had no choice but to use old fashioned trial and error. Her theory being that by exposing Loki to heat, his Jotun nature will eventually adjust his core temperature to offset the heat and become stabilized. She'd give it a day. Maybe he'd be dead by then. Jane hurls a blanket over his body, her lips twitching to hold back a snarl.

Jane's not even sure what to look for in her first aid kit. Bottles of old prescription pain pills roll over the white tiles beside her feet along with boxes of gauze and toiletries strewn about. He could be suffering a number of things. She may be a master astrophysicist but the epitome of Jane's knowledge of emergency care is how to properly, and gingerly stick on a band-aid. Jane thinks over his symptoms; violent shaking, blue lips, contorted breathes. However, being a Jotun, hypothermia didn't really apply to him.

Jane knows the dumbest thing she could do would be to take him to an emergency room. First of all, the closest clinic closed at 8 pm and was an hour from here and second; what would they do when they found out he wasn't human? Not to mention the plethora of cellphones and cameras that took pictures of him during New York. The media did ten-page spreads about him for weeks, meaning his face was about as recognizable as the Iron Man suit. Then, SHIELD would come for him, then for her.

Besides the fact, Jane at the back of her mind knows that whatever he's suffering from is not caused from anything from this world. She's not sure of anything that could incapacitate a man of Loki's stature, much less a god that wields magic. Except for Hulk, that is.

_Magic…_ Jane groans inwardly.

Jane runs back down the stairs into the living room, finding it already toasty and crackling from the fire. The light from the fire bounces off the olive walls of the living room, giving the illusion the room was almost breathing.A soft golden aura filling the small room, from her bookcases lining the wall, to the glass of her grandfather clock. The light glitters brilliantly from the brass pendulum as it swings its measure of time. Everything seems to have been given life from the fire, even Loki.

Jane steps off the staircase to the back of the couch. With a twisted grimace, Jane inspect the man. His pale blue-ish face looks like stone, carved into a placid expression. Jane's furious that she finds his face so peaceful, that a monster like him could look so beautiful and innocent.

But Jane knows that past this beautiful face is a devil. Far from innocent. This was the same man that nearly leveled an entire town full of innocent people just to kill one person: Thor. This was the same man that had nearly brought full out war between Asgard and Jotenheim. The man who snuffed out countless lives for the sake of his own ego. It was ultimately his fault that Thor ever landed on her doorstep in the first place all that time ago in Antiguo, New Mexico. Granted all of Jane's research was proven true by Thor's arrival, she can't help thinking that had Thor not come…

Maybe Darcy and Erik would still be alive, Jane feels her eyes prickle with tears and her palms grow to fists at her sides as she stands looking down at Loki.

Jane can't deny that she'd like to kill Loki, or at the very least make him suffer as much as she has. She wants to have everything he loved and more ripped from him, just like they were her. At this thought Jane chuckles humorously to herself. A man like him can't love anything or anyone. There's no room in a monster's heart for delicate things like love.

With her eyes still on Loki, Jane strides over to her high-backed armchair and sits. Jane keeps both hands gripped on the armrests, her shoulders growing up her spine the longer she looks at him. Thinking of all that could have been had Loki never even existed.

_How many lives could have been saved? _Jane grits her teeth and squeezes her eyes shut.

Frigga's life. She would have been saved as well.

But a cold, sharp pang of guilt strikes through Jane as if in protest. Jane knows full and well that Frigga's blood stains her hands, not Loki's. If Jane hadn't released the Aether, Malekith wouldn't have been drawn to Asgard, wouldn't have killed all those in his path to get to her, including Frigga.

And Jane only got a small sample of Loki's grief. Jane, though she was in a half-conscious state, was very aware of Loki and Thor's conversation.

_"Who put me there?!" _

"You know damn well who!"

It was Frigga they were fighting about and Jane can't help but feel the responsibility for her death weigh on her back like a demon whispering incantations into her ear.

I_t's your fault, all your fault, if you hadn't touched that damn rock in the cave, wouldn't you stop to think it was put there for a reason!_ Jane feels her eyes brim with a poisonous onslaught of fresh tears.

Jane doesn't hold back her tears. She feels as if a damn's let loose inside her and the tears flood down her cheeks. Jane grows small in her armchair, curling up like the child in her dreams. Did Loki know that Frigga, his only remaining ally, had died for her? This guilt, like the guilt of Darcy and Erik's deaths are stuck to her. Like a stain that nothing, not even time could wash away. She had been the reason Frigga had been murdered.

That is what frightens Jane most of all: Jane had killed the only person left that loved, truly loved, Loki. The one person in all of the Universe that truly understood Loki, his nature, and loved him for everything that he was. His one reason to be a force of good. His last remaining voice of conscience, and Jane had murdered her.

What then, would hold him back from turning his rage to Jane? What then, if not Frigga, would keep him from whatever horror's he dreamed of releasing?

Jane shakes furiously, sobs wracking her small frame. If he awoke, what dangers waited for her here. There's no way for her to call for help if she were in immediate danger, the landline hadn't worked in months and the nearest neighbor was ten minutes away. No caring neighbor that could stop by and notice something awry. Jane can feel her heart beat quicken in her chest, thunking deeply in the hollow of her aching throat. Jane wishes now more than ever that she were back in London, with Darcy and Erik. She tries to swallow her cries, but finds her throat completely dry. There's no hope in trying to change what's been done.

Jane can't think of a single thing she could defend herself with against Loki, a six foot five god that went toe to toe with the Hulk and survived.

A new swell of emotions erupt inside Jane, too many for her to delegate with all at once. Aside from her sorrow and hopelessness: Fear, anger, confusion, pain. Jane had waited a year for any sign at all that Thor still harbored one iota of care for Jane or her safety or Midgard for that matter. And does Jane get? For the pain and suffering and heartache? What does Jane Foster get? His psychotic brother.

Jane lingers on that thought as her tears glisten down her cheeks. Though Jane has been out of practice, she is still a clever woman. Jane knows that Loki finding himself here, to the exact place where Jane had tucked herself from the world, is no mistake. So with the improbable out of the way, Jane had to contemplate the probable reasons why Loki, Loki for christsakes, is here in her living room.

He had to have faked his death, Jane mulls over the thought, the pieces of the puzzle falling into place within her mind. He faked his death and Thor was in on it. Thor and Loki would have had to had worked alone, the other warriors would never have allowed Loki to walk free.

And Jane knows that Loki is here, because Thor must know she is here on this lonely Wisconsin peninsula. Which means he knew for a year that Jane had been living in hiding. Almost nothing escaped the gaze of Heimdall, Jane knew that much. Jane's flurry of emotions solidify into one raging fury she feels burn through her chest and eyes.

_He knew this whole time, this whole time and did nothing._

Jane wants to scream, she wants to tear something apart, render something limb from limb until there was nothing recognizable left. She wants Thor to hurt, hurt until he feels everything she's had bottled up for the past year.

Thor said nothing, not even a messenger for a year.

And how could Thor let a criminal, a complete and utter monster like Loki free? For what reason? But she knows how simple Thor could be. He must have thought that he could redeem Loki by defeating Malekith. But he would have never accomplished this defeat with the help Asgard if they knew Loki was alive. Obviously Loki had tricked Thor and escaped the second he and Jane fled Svartalheim.

Jane wraps her arms around her knees, her body aching from emotion and her eyes feeling raw and heavy from the tears. She glances to the grandfather clock standing proudly in the corner near her bookcases. It was nearly six in the morning. Jane's tired eyes float to the fireplace, the chaos of her mind stills over the flames as they lick and hiss against the glass panels of the fireplace. As if they begged to be set free.

_The fire seeps in through Jane's skin as if it were made of tissue paper. It melts past the cartilage, muscle sinew, and bone, sizzling and hissing as engulfs Jane's body. Her screams drown in the roar of the inferno around her. But only a ghost screams, Jane is no more. _

_She is on Svartalfheim, the red light descending upon her. She runs. The kitchen, that poisonous laugh. There are two bodies made of what used to be the two people she loved most. _

_'I killed them…I'll kill you!' _

_The red door creaks open into swallowing mouth of darkness. Jane is crouched in a closet with her knees pulled up to her chest, small as a child. 'They never stop fighting…' _

_Svartlaheim. The cracked and dead earth beneath her bare feet. The burning red light. _

_It's coming. _

_**It's here. **_

_"Jane Foster," the sharp-edged voice lures._

_ The ringing, the drowning, droning ringing. _

Jane startles awake. The first thing she notices is that she's lying in her bed.

When had I gone up stairs?

The second is the prickling at the back of her neck. Though her room lie swathed in a coat of blackness, Jane can feel another presence near her, as if little-fishy Jane had finally come upon the rock in her fishbowl. She knows this isn't like the nightmares she's used to having, where shapes materialized themselves from the darkness and her mind plays its usual tricks on her. No, Jane knows this is real. She's hyper aware of the sound of silence encasing her. Too quiet. Like the calm before the storm.

Jane remains still but she feels as if the pounding of her heart shook her entire body. She squeezes her eyes shut.

"I know you are awake, Foster." A smooth voice says from within the darkness.

**More to come soon. Thanks for sticking with me on this you guys. **

**Love, **

**Hunny xxoo**


	9. Too Late

**Hi! It makes me happy to be updating again. Thank you so so much to those of you that have reviewed, it really helps my get a feel for my writing. And please, if you enjoy my story favorite or follow to let me know! **

**Love, **

**Hunny xxoo**

* * *

**Jane**

"Miss Foster," the silver voice says, "This will be much easier if you cooperate."

Jane keeps stock still, her heart thundering against her throat and brain. The silence continues once more. She knows she can't keep this up any longer.

She hears the shifting of fabric from behind her, where Loki must be. Jane slips her hand under her pillow, feeling for the Swiss army knife she always kept there.

There's a footstep in Jane's direction.

"Jane," the voice says in earnest.

Jane grips the handle of the knife and within the same breath, twists around and hurls the knife in his direction.

There's a grunt. Jane doesn't look to see if she hit him or not, but scrambles from her bed, cursing as the sheets catch on her ankles. Jane falls into the hallway, with a glance backward she can see Loki's shape through the darkness coming after her. She yelps and struggles to her feet, her heart racing in her chest.

"Jane!" Loki calls after her. She runs down the stairs, nearly tripping and completely falling down them. Jane can't breathe. It's still before the sun has rises and the darkness of her living room consumes her. Jane whips around, hearing Loki come down the stairs. She flies into the kitchen, knowing he's just a step or two behind her. He calls her name again. Jane rifles through the darkness, ripping open the drawer she prays hosts her kitchen knives. She hears footsteps thunking on the har dining room, just a breath away from the kitchen. Jane grips the handle of a knife and holds it out against the darkness. She steps back and her spine touches the edge of the counter. Jane knows she's cornered herself. The only way to escape Loki would be through him.

_"Fuck_," Jane curses under her breath, the house falling to silence once more. Her eyes pan through the blackness, searching for the outlines of shapes and movement. Jane's heartbeat plays thunderously in her ears: tha-thunk, tha-thunk, tha-thunk. Moments like hours pass in utter silence.

Jane grips the knife tighter in her hands to keep it from shaking as she feels through the darkness with the other.

She steps forward with her knees knocking together and a chill running through her body. Jane hadn't noticed how cold it had gotten. She reaches her other hand through the darkness in search for the light switch.

Maybe this is just another nightmare… Her mind rambles.

Jane rounds the corner into her dining room step by wary step with her knife extended and hand searching. She stays close to the wall, edging across through the darkness. Finally, her fingers come to the smooth plastic of the light switch. Jane steels herself and becomes rigid in the hopes of appearing threatening. Jane flips the switch. The small 'flick' noise sounding like a cannon in the silence of the house. Yet, the room stays in darkness.

Jane inwardly curses and waits for the electricity to boot up.

The light hums and flickers.

There, at the dining room table sitting across from Jane, is Loki. But a terrifying version, the real version of what Loki is. A blue man with scar-like etchings across his face and limbs with horns protruding from his forehead that curl back towards the crown of his skull. He is illuminated for just a moment in the flicker of the light. Even though it was a second, Jane knows exactly what she saw. Loki's true form. The monster.

Then blackness. The light hums against then 'clinks' on once more, this time, a very different Loki sits across from her at the table. The façade. His black hair is slick with sweat and his ivory skin looks clammy in the pale light of her dining room. Jane's eyes remain wide and alert, her knife pointed at his chest. He doesn't look at her, but instead sits hunched over with his arm slung across his chest to his shoulder. Loki releases a dark, throaty chuckle.

"I think one is enough, Foster," Loki says, removing his hand to reveal the hilt of her army knife plunged into his bicep. Blood from his wound stains his green tunic and dribbles down his arm. Jane stands unmoving, the knife still held in the space between them.

"Are you here to kill me?" Jane shifts on her feet. Loki ignores her and instead, inspects his wound. He wraps his hand around the hilt and with a twisted scowl he pulls the knife from his flesh, a spurt of blood following it. He throws the knife on the table and grips his shoulder with clenched teeth.

"If I were here to kill you: it would be you bleeding and not me, Foster." Loki huffs and winces in pain. He straightens into the chair steadily, blood beginning to ooze from between his fingers. Jane eyes him, then his shoulder, then him again. She searches his eyes for any glimmer of a lie. Jane eases her knife to her side with a tight grip.

"If you're not here to kill me, then why the fuck are you here?" Jane growls.

"_Oof_," Loki grunts, "Coarse language is very unbecoming of you, Foster." A shiver of rage runs through Jane.

"I'm not interested in playing games, Loki." She raises the knife, her arm beginning to ache. "Why. Are. You. Here." Loki chuckles and grips his shoulder.

"I would be obliged to answer your questions but can it possible be when I am not bleeding?" Loki raises a brow. Jane can feel the pressure of his gaze move from her face to her body, to her shaking legs, then to the knife pointed at him. His expression softens. "I'm not here to harm you."

"Tell me why and I'll drop the knife."

A frustrated growl rolls like thunder up Loki's throat.

"It's a long story."

"I've got nothing but time." Jane's eyes turn shrewd on Loki. Loki regards her for a moment, before assuming his usual snarky attitude.

"I'm here for my own protection." Loki pauses. "And yours."

Jane throws her head back and laughs. Loki's brows knit together, obviously not the reaction he expected. Jane shakes her head.

"Did Thor send you here?"

"And if he did?" Loki leans forward with a pale grin.

Jane's teeth gnaw at the inside of her cheek to distract herself from tears. She lets the knife drop to her side then stabs the blade into the kitchen table. Jane stares at her knife, then glances to the bloodied one resting on the table across from her.

"If that were the case, you could just tell Thor," Jane pauses, "That he was too late." Jane lets her statement hang in the air. Loki doesn't say a word but she can feel his eyes boring into her.

"I'd like you to leave. Now." Jane wipes her eyes and turns to the darkness and walks into the living room as if to go back up the stairs and into bed like nothing had transpired. She's not sure how to feel.

_Could Loki be lying? Could he have other reasons for being here?_ Jane's too numbed by pain too think about it.

"Jane, wait." Loki stands and follows after her. Jane stops in the middle of the living room, her body stiff like a corpse.

"I don't want you here." Her voice is barely a whisper. Loki stands behind her, close enough that Jane can smell the metallic scent of his blood.

"Did something happen?"

Jane whips around, her eyes red and teary.

"Don't pretend that you fucking care! I don't need your protection. I don't need _anyone_," Jane feels her face burn with the intensity of her emotions gathering together like a hurricane. Jane stabs a finger into Loki's chest. "I get nothing for a fucking year! And he sends _you?_"

"Foster-"

"I don't want to hear it!"

"Then what do you want Jane?" Loki's voice rises, not in anger but in some other emotion that Jane can't detect. Concern? Jane's chest feels like its crushing in on itself when she looks at Loki. As if he's just a reminder that Thor has still not come for her. Loki's face is half cast in darkness as he glowers down at her, with sharp shadows curving the angles of his face and his green eyes nearly glowing in the darkness. Like a terrifying Adonis.

"Didn't you hear me? I want you to leave." Jane feels her throat clench tightly around her words, making them sound choked and aching.

"No you don't." Loki replies. Jane doesn't argue. "You need me as much as I need you."

"What could I possibly need from you?" Jane growls taking a step closer towards Loki. She can feel the iciness of his breath brush against her forehead and cheeks.

"Answers." Loki says, his face stony and grim. Jane examines him, noticing those speckled scars lining Loki's lips.

"And what makes you think I'd trust anything you have to say?" Jane crosses her arms across her chest tightly.

"What makes you think you have a choice, Foster?" Loki counters, raising his eyebrow with a cool smirk. Jane grinds her teeth. They hold each other at a stand off for a long pause.

"Now, we could bicker until sunrise or you could help me tend to my injury." Loki takes a step away from her towards the light of the dining room, illuminating his blood-soaked tunic. Jane takes a deep breath and massages her temples to attempt to smooth her emotions away.

"Stay here." Jane says gruffly before disappearing upstairs. She returns a few moments later with a first aid kit and a warm rag. She enters the light of the dining room and points to the kitchen chair. "Sit."

Loki silently obliges and sits with a deep sigh, as if he were exhausted with the whole situation. Jane scowls.

"Take off your shirt." Loki stiffens. "I didn't think the the God of Mischief was modest," she adds.

Loki's face washes over with a tight expression. Without a word Loki reaches behind his head with his uninjured arm, gathering the material of his tunic, then pulls it over his head. Jane opens the kit and stares blankly, knowing she hasn't the vaguest idea of how to do stitches. Jane vaguely grabs at materials. First she pulls out a roll of bandages and gauze pads, then lastly, the packaged hook with thread. When Jane turns back to Loki she stiffens at the sight of him.

Loki is littered with thick tendrils of scars reaching all over his body. Ones at his spine like slashes from a whip. Others at his wrists, probably from shackles. Some littering his chest over his pectoral, old forgotten battle scars. Loki notices her pause.

"Something wrong, Foster?" His head is hung low, raven hair hiding his face. Jane turns away and opens her mouth to speak but finds her throat completely dry.

She clears her throat and looks down meekly at the medical supplies.

"I just, don't know how to do stitches, that's all."

With his good hand Loki reaches for the gauze, bandages and the hook. Jane turns around, careful not to look at his body. Loki tears open the package with his mouth and holds out the hook and thread to Jane.

"It easy. Just like sewing."

Jane takes the hook delicately in her fingers.

"I've never sewn in my life."

Loki rolls his eyes, ignoring her, then goes to dab the blood from his shoulder and arm with the warm rag. Jane stands there silently, pinching the hook tightly between her fingers. Loki finishes and tosses the blood stained rag to the table.

"Well? Am I going to have to do it myself?" Loki nods to the instrument between Jane's fingers. Jane shakes her head and approaches Loki, pulling a chair behind her and setting it close to Loki. He straightens himself in the chair, his face focused forward into empty space. Jane sits and steels herself. When her fingers make contact with his skin, Jane is sure she sees a shiver run through him.

"Afraid of needles?" She asks, lining up the hook with a starting point on his wound. Loki only hums lightly, offering no discernable answer. Jane pauses before making the first stitch in his skin. She stares at the open wound, less than three inches long, but it makes her stomach wind in ropes.

"Go on, Foster," Loki says impaciently. Jane lets out a breath.

"Sorry." Jane uses her fingers to push the edges of the wounds closer together. With shaking fingers, plunges the hook beneath his skin and pulls it through the other side the wound. Jane can see that Loki has clenched his jaw and let his eyes fall shut. She never thought a warrior like him would be queazy about needles. Jane pulls the threat through and begins on the next stitch. Loki lets out a forced breath. Jane glances at his face as she pulls the thread through, then back at the scared littering his body.

"So are you going to answer me?" Jane begins another stitch. Loki wrinkles his nose at the pain then side glances her with a smirk.

"Since I am at your mercy, Foster, it seems that I must." He grunts as she tugs on the thread for good measure.

"Well?" Jane pauses her work. Loki looks back into open space.

"Where should I start, Foster?"

"At the beginning." Loki sighs and winces as Jane begins another stitch. Loki looks down at the floor as he speaks, his voice low and lost of its charm.

"As you can surmise: my 'death' on Svartalheim was all a ruse. After both yourself and Thor left, I transformed my body into a Aesir guard and hid in Asgard."

"What did you do there?"

"Waited. Until I could not anymore."

"Why?"

"It became too dangerous for me," Jane pauses her work. _What could be too dangerous for someone like Loki?_

"I have a tendency to create enemies. I'm sure that doesn't surprise you, Foster. I was captured."

"That where you were? For a year?" Jane glances at Loki's scarred torso before getting back to his wound, finishing the last stitch.

Loki nods silently. Jane finishes the last stich then grabs a pair of scissors from the kit and snips the thread. Loki physically relaxes, his body becoming less rigid.

"So how'd you get here?" Jane grabs a bandage patch and presses it over the stitched up wound.

"Thor rescued me, more or less, from my captors and-"

"Why would he do that?" Jane asks with a tone of sceptisism.

"It's rude to interrupt, Foster." Jane sits back in her chair and crosses her arms.

"You don't make the rules her, Loki. Answer me." Loki copies her, almost mockingly. He relaxes back in his chair and crosses his arms.

"Asgard was, is, in peril. Thor sent me to look after his interests on Midgard."

"So I'm an interest now to Thor?" She laughs and shakes her head. Loki cocks his head.

"I thought that was obvious, Foster."

"He sure has a fucked up way of showing his interest. He leaves and doesn't come back for a goddamn year. What makes me so interesting all of a sudden?" Jane stands and grips her hands into fists, glowering down at Loki. "Go back and tell him he was too late."

"I still don't know what you mean by that Jane." Jane's surprised that Loki's voice lacks its usual smugness.

"It's none of your business. Or his. Leave." Jane begins to walk past Loki when he grips her wrist, stopping her at his side. The iciness of his grip almost makes Jane jump.

"Let go of me."

"I can't leave, Jane."

"Can't leave or won't leave."

"It doesn't matter. Thor destroyed the Bifrost. I couldn't go back even if I wanted to," Loki says slowly. Jane's face goes blank. She finds herself at a loss for words, too many questions firing inside her mind.

"Wh-Why? Why would…" Jane pulls herself from Loki's grip. Loki stands, his face paler than usual.

"Destroying the Bifrost would at the very least down our enemies in Asgard from reaching you or I."

"So I'm stuck with you."

"It looks as if that would be the case."

Jane walks away from Loki and into the living room, where the dawning sunlight has reached itself inside, illuminating the small room. Jane rubs her arms, feeling suddenly very cold.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me," She says under her breath. She can hear Loki come to stand behind her, unfortunately not close enough for Jane to get a quick punch in if she wanted to.

"I'm afraid not." Loki pauses thoughtfully, "Jane, you are a part of this now by being connected to Thor, that much is nonnegotiable."

"I've gathered that much." Jane turns and glares at Loki, letting all the anger and confusion inside her emote through her body. "How long?"

"A week? A month? However long it takes until Asgard is secured."

"How can you be sure you weren't followed? That whoever was after you won't still search?"

"Because I'm very clever, Miss Foster. The moment I arrived I cast a shadow over myself, ensuring that anything and anyone close to me would disappear from enemy eyes."

Jane looks down, chewing her bottom lip.

"Let me make this very clear, Loki. You are not a guest, you are an intruder. The only reason I'm not calling SHEILD is because of this magic shadow thing you have. This is my home. So stay out of my way." Jane goes to move past Loki and clean up the mess in the dinging room when he steps in her way.

"You don't seem to grasp the concept of 'stay out of my way' easily, do you." Jane warns.

"I've answered many of your questions, Foster. It seems only fair that you would answer me this," Loki says, stretching his arms out to block the threshold.

"I don't have to answer your questions Loki." Jane tries to turn for the way of the front door, to escape Loki when he steps in her way again. Jane steps back and crosses her arms. Its the first time Jane's actually felt afraid in his presence, his body moved like a panther, fast and deliberate. She knows that if he wanted to, he could snap her neck like a twig with one swipe.

"You see, it took as very long time to find you since both Thor and I believed you to be in London with your companions. Tell me why this isn't so." Loki settles himself between Jane and the front door, making it very clear that he wouldn't let her go until she answered. Jane clenches her jaw, her auburn hair falling into her face. She looks down, her body beginning to shake.

"Theyre dead. My friends. That's why I'm not in London. Because Thor's enemies already got to me. They killed my friends and almost killed me," Jane's voice is low and hollow of emotion. She'd already spent her tears on Eric and Darcy.

"They?"

"A woman and man." Loki stares down at Jane, unmoving, either in disbelief of shock. Shock that a puny mortal like Jane Foster could survive intergalactic enemies. Jane sighs heavily then reaches to the hem of her shirt and pulls it up enough to expose her lower abdomen, where a large scar rips across her skin. Loki looks down at the healed wound, then back to Jane, his eyes boring into hers.

"I'm sorry, Jane. I didn't realize…"

Jane rips down her shirt then takes a threatening step towards Loki.

"When this is done, and Asgard is safe: I want you to leave. And then I want you to tell Thor to never come back." Jane says, emotion beginning to overcome her voice. But before she can break down, Jane pushes past Loki. She throws on her boots as fast as she can, yet Loki doesn't move from his spot. Loki remains motionless like a statue, staring into open space behind Jane as she makes her escape and slams the door behind her.

* * *

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